Again, the clear implication is "it's their fault," as opposed to the many other Hoquiamites who apparently voted against the levy.

That's not journalism, it's illegitimately assigning blame.

I may agree with Turnow's point, for example, that elected officials who don't vote aren't worthy of the office--but that's NOT what the story in question was about. Were those three Hoquiam councilmembers the only elected officials in the county who failed to vote in this election?

It's apparent to me that the thought process at the Daily Hurl was "measure failed by two votes--three council members didn't vote at all--AH HAH! GOTCHA!"

Don't need address.

Google and I didn't really *need* the names, addresses and DOB of the people in the post to which I replied, either.

Today is one of the days I'm glad I'm not an elected official.

Me, too. I suspect we'll see a whole bunch more of this "good reporting" in the future as print news media desperately fights going the way of the buggy whip.

Something to point out. I went to the sound politics website and checked my own name. It shows the last time I voted was in Nov 09. In reality I last voted last month for the Aberdeen School Levy. I mailed both my mine and my wife's ballot prior to the election date. This of course calls both the county and the website into question. I tried to find the link the county has for last ballot received but that must only be active during the actual election time (if someone finds it let me know).

Of course the point is that Sound Politics and the County could have been in error. So with that said how much time were the candidates given to call back TDW? Not saying they weren't given ample time nor that they did not vote. Simply wondering if they were actually given enough time to call back and give their side of the story. I now if I would have been the subject of the article and was out of the area while the calls were made and got back to find this article knowing I had voted I would be pretty pissed off. Again let me underline the fact that TDW may have done everything right. I just feel in the light of seeing the error on my own name these are valid questions for which we deserve answers.

FWIW it does not show my wife having voted either. Ballots were mailed together. Since she is a teacher an issue could have been made about her not voting if the levy we were talking about was Aberdeen's school levy which failed by one vote. And the issue would have been wrong since she did vote (btw she voted yes of course) but either the county failed to report the vote or something else went awry.

The Sound Politics website clearly indicates it was last updated Jan. 29, 2010. February ballots don't appear.

Missed that. But I guess the question would be why does it only show that three of the councilpersons did not vote unless I'm misunderstanding the previous post about the website?

Another interesting point. Maybe three people on the council did not return ballots--but who is to say that the other nine didn't return a ballot without casting a vote? Or voted against the levy?

It's true that we don't know how people voted in any given election. We're not supposed to. The point is, at least two council members felt the issue was important enough to vote to have it put on the ballot (at an expense to the city), but not important enough to drop the ballot in the mailbox. I understand, things happen, and I wouldn't make a decision on who to vote for based on this alone. Personally, my ballot made it into the mail at the last minute. But I did get it mailed.

As far as the whole issue with the information being public, that isn't new or unusual at all. Anybody can walk into the auditor's office and ask for a nice database that can imported into Excel with all sorts of information for every registered voter in the county and have it emailed to you for $6. Not bad if you're trying to reach potential voters.

I would say that it could be an issue in that any ballot could have been lost in the mail. It seems highly unlikely, but still possible.

The information is very good, though, and easily accessible. I would like to see information on law enforcement and corrections officers be redactible upon request, and that DOB not be published as part of the records. I was told that was part of the public record as a "tie-breaker" of sorts, like in those instances where there are two records with the same name, to determine if they are the same person with two registrations.

BTW, one can easily see that Steven and Jacob did both vote, as well as MWMI's wife. Good job.